Cultural Pragmatics of Politeness: The Role of Javanese Krama Inggil in Indonesian Academic Communication
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61320/jolcc.v3i2.248-263Abstract
This study investigates the cultural pragmatics of politeness through the integration of Javanese krama inggil expressions in Indonesian academic communication. While most Central Javanese people are bilingual in Javanese and Indonesian, the use of highly respectful Javanese forms within formal Indonesian-language settings remains underexplored. This research aims to examine how Javanese krama inggil expressions are inserted into Indonesian discourse during academic meetings organized by the Higher Education Service Institute Region VI, Central Java. Ten recordings of meeting interactions were analyzed qualitatively to identify the lexical and contextual meanings, politeness levels, and acceptance levels of the inserted expressions. Questionnaire data from lecturers and administrative staff were also collected to assess their perceptions. The findings reveal that krama inggil expressions appear systematically across opening, main, and closing segments of meetings, serving as markers of deference, respect, and cultural identity. The majority of respondents rated these expressions as “polite” or “very polite,” and “acceptable” or “highly acceptable” within Indonesian academic contexts. The results suggest that incorporating local linguistic resources enriches communicative harmony, reinforces cultural values, and demonstrates how politeness strategies transcend linguistic boundaries in multilingual professional settings.
References
Agyekum, K. (2018). Politeness in intercultural communication: Theoretical perspectives and implications. Pragmatics and Society, 9(4), 573–596. https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.18018.agy
Anderson, K., & Stokoe, E. (2021). Discourse and identity in institutional interaction. Cambridge University Press.
Aspers, P., & Corte, U. (2019). What is qualitative in qualitative research? Qualitative Sociology, 42(2), 139–160. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-019-9413-7
Bayyurt, Y., & Sifakis, N. (2020). Developing intercultural communicative competence in English as a lingua franca communication. ELT Journal, 74(3), 289–301. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccz067
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
Bousfield, D. (2018). Impoliteness in interaction: Revisiting face and social order. Journal of Pragmatics, 134, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2018.07.009
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper, J. (2011). Impoliteness: Using language to cause offence. Cambridge University Press.
Culpeper, J., & Hardaker, C. (2017). Impoliteness and aggression in digital communication. Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, 5(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1075/jlac.5.1.01cul
Eelen, G. (2019). A critique of politeness theories (2nd ed.). Routledge.
Economidou-Kogetsidis, M. (2016). Variation in evaluations of (im)politeness across contexts and interlocutors. Journal of Pragmatics, 106, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2016.10.001
Errington, J. (1998). Shifting Languages: Interaction and Identity in Javanese Indonesia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Farida, N., & Yuliana, R. (2019). Javanese politeness in WhatsApp communication among Indonesian youth. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 9(2), 310–320. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v9i2.20238
Fitch, K. L. (2020). Face and politeness revisited: The relevance of relational communication. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 39(5–6), 683–697. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X20931705
Fukushima, S. (2021). Politeness across cultures: New perspectives and methodological considerations. Intercultural Pragmatics, 18(3), 401–425. https://doi.org/10.1515/ip-2021-4001
Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Anchor Books.
Haugh, M., & Chang, W. S. (2019). Understanding face and im/politeness across languages and cultures. Pragmatics, 29(2), 127–154. https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.18065.hau
Hofstede, G. (2011). Dimensionalizing cultures: The Hofstede model in context. Online Readings in Psychology and Culture, 2(1). https://doi.org/10.9707/2307-0919.1014
Jaworski, A., & Pritchard, A. (2020). The Routledge handbook of language and tourism. Routledge.
Kádár, D. Z. (2017). Politeness, impoliteness and ritual: Maintaining the moral order in interpersonal interaction. Cambridge University Press.
Kaplan, R. B., & Baldauf, R. B. (1997). Language Planning: From Practice to Theory. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Kecskes, I. (2014). Intercultural pragmatics. Oxford University Press.
Leech, G. (2014). The pragmatics of politeness. Oxford University Press.
Locher, M. A., & Watts, R. J. (2008). Relational work and impoliteness: Negotiating norms of linguistic behaviour. In D. Bousfield & M. A. Locher (Eds.), Impoliteness in language (pp. 77–99). Mouton de Gruyter.
Nadar, F. X. (2020). The realization of Javanese politeness strategies in modern Indonesian communication. Humaniora, 32(3), 221–234. https://doi.org/10.22146/jh.56790
Nugroho, R. A., & Djatmika. (2018). Cultural scripts and politeness in Javanese society: A discourse perspective. Journal of Pragmatics Research, 1(2), 73–90.
Rahardi, K. (2018). Bahasa, pragmatik, dan budaya: Kajian kesantunan dan ketidaksantunan berbahasa. Erlangga.
Renkema, J. (2018). Discourse studies: An introduction (2nd ed.). John Benjamins.
Sifianou, M. (2019). Politeness and culture revisited: Discourse, identity, and relational work. Journal of Pragmatics, 146, 56–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2019.01.001
Sneddon, J. N. (2003). The Indonesian Language: Its History and Role in Modern Society. Sydney: UNSW Press.
Spencer-Oatey, H., & Franklin, P. (2009). Intercultural Interaction: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Intercultural Communication. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Spencer-Oatey, H. (2018). Culturally speaking: Culture, communication and politeness theory (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury Academic.
Sugiyono. (2019). Metode penelitian kualitatif, kuantitatif, dan R&D. Alfabeta.
Sukarno. (2017). Politeness strategies in responding to complaints in Javanese: The case of university students. Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 7(3), 659–667. https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v7i3.9828
Trosborg, A. (2017). Interlanguage pragmatics: Requests, complaints, and apologies. De Gruyter Mouton.
Watts, R. J. (2019). Politeness. Cambridge University Press.
Wijana, I. D. P. (2020). Pragmatik: Kajian kesantunan berbahasa Indonesia. UGM Press.
Yin, R. K. (2014). Case Study Research: Design and Methods (5th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Yule, G. (2020). The study of language (7th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 Budi Purnomo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
License and Copyright Agreement
In submitting the manuscript to the journal, the authors certify that:
- Their co-authors authorize them to enter into these arrangements.
- The work described has not been formally published before, except in the form of an abstract or as part of a published lecture, review, thesis, or overlay journal.
- That it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere,
- That its publication has been approved by all the author(s) and by the responsible authorities – tacitly or explicitly – of the institutes where the work has been carried out.
- They secure the right to reproduce any material that has already been published or copyrighted elsewhere.
- They agree to the following license and copyright agreement.
Copyright
Authors who publish in the Journal of Linguistics, Culture, and Communication agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY-SA 4.0) that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) before and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges and earlier and greater citation of published work.
Licensing for Data Publication
Journal of Linguistics, Culture, and Communication use a variety of waivers and licenses that are specifically designed for and appropriate for the treatment of data:
- Open Data Commons Attribution License, http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/ (default)
- Creative Commons CC-Zero Waiver, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
- Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence, http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/1-0/
Other data publishing licenses may be allowed as exceptions (subject to approval by the editor on a case-by-case basis) and should be justified with a written statement from the author, which will be published with the article.
.jpg)
